


Swedish Meatballs

by kittydesade



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 20:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Londo may not be settling comfortably into his new role, but G'Kar helps him understand that some things are a universal constant. Both the grand and the small and mundane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swedish Meatballs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/gifts).



If asked, he would swear he only closed his eyes for a moment. Emperor Mollari must by necessity collect his thoughts in order to properly express himself to the Minister of the Interior, yes, with his eyes closed. And how do you collect your thoughts, Master Secretary? Yet when Emperor Mollari opened them again he saw no one, dubious looks or otherwise. By all avenues and entries that he could see he had been abandoned by his staff. There was no one in the office, no one creeping about the hallways like some inoffensive pet, no one poking their head in with an officious sniff and a piece of documentation to sign. He didn't even hear the sound of one of the usual palace spies scurrying away the moment they noticed the Emperor was awake again. Not that he had been asleep. The guards were stiff and still as statues. Or perhaps they were statues. The lighting, he decided, was all wrong, in color and tint and the way it cast shadows too long and too sharply defined on the floor. 

"This is a dream," he concluded in a mutter, lest he be wrong and someone think he was finally succumbing to the same madness that had so thoroughly encompassed Cartagia's mercifully short reign. "This is a dream, and in a moment I will wake to be nagged like a misbehaving fourth wife by my secretary. Or I'm in some strange new form of hell," he admitted. Because it was just within the realm of possibility that a Shadow creature, or perhaps a Vorlon, had lingered to pull Londo Mollari, Shadow conspirator and betrayer, into some form of private hell for their own twisted enjoyment. 

He pried himself up out of his chair, an act which should have been a relief and instead only compounded the aches he suffered from his imperial seat, and lurched a few paces before the stiffness wore out. All the cushions in the world could not make that chair more comfortable, and he was sorely regretting taking down the more ornate and billowy decorations Cartagia had left in favor of a more simple, Sheridan-like business office. "The first thing I should have done as Emperor was to have this entire palace redesigned. Something with a more comfortable aesthetic." None of the guards commented or even flickered in their stern expressions, although he supposed that was to be expected. "One couldn't have a guard who would giggle at every amusing remark the Emperor made, after all, it would be the height of impropriety." They didn't comment on that, either. Sometimes Londo felt a little impropriety would be the appropriate thing to do; after all, the Universe paid no attention whatsoever to one's dignity. Why should oneself safeguard dignity and solemnity at all times? And thinking of dignity and solemnity. 

"G'Kar!" No, no sign of him either, even though it sometimes seemed as though the irrational, irascible Narn had made it his personal mission in life to stick to Londo for the express purpose of making his life that much more surreal. Which might explain why he was nowhere to be found when Londo needed him. "Damn you and your strange red eyes, where are you..." 

Something stirred on the back of his neck. Just a breeze. The curtain had fluttered out of the corner of his eye, there were too many drafts in the palace. He pushed it out of his mind and kept looking for G'Kar, which was the more pressing matter at hand.

"G'Kar, where have you gotten yourself to this time? I swear, you are worse than Vir for popping up exactly when you would be least convenient and disappearing right when I..." 

Turn around. Of course, there stood G'Kar now where there had been no G'Kar before, patient, with his hands folded together in front of him, an inquiring expression on his face. "What is it, Mollari?" 

Londo did not jump out of his finely made coat or make an undignified squeaking noise. Emperor Londo Mollari the First would never do such a thing; he always moved and spoke exactly as he meant to. And he was never startled. Ever. Especially by a Narn. Especially by _this_ Narn. "What on earth are you doing, skulking about like that?" 

"I wasn't skulking," G'Kar frowned, although Londo still wasn't sure he wasn't being laughed at in some obscure manner. "Are you all right, Mollari? You look a bit... perturbed." 

Londo opened her mouth to explained in great detail exactly why he was perturbed and what part G'Kar had to play in it, but there was that tickle again. Becoming an itch which soon it would be impossible not to scratch. Londo pushed it more firmly to the back of his mind where it would stay if it knew what was good for it. "Fine." He attempted to impose a tone of finality on the word. "Never better. Well rested and ready to get back to business, unless of course it is now dinnertime. What time is it?"

"Dinnertime, as a matter of fact. I came to find you. They said you were resting."

Londo's glare was only somewhat tempered by the persistent itch on his neck.

  


  


  


At least dinner was palatable. The chefs had been replaced entirely, as was protocol when the succession was violent or the throne had changed hands too much within too short a period of time. In this case, both were true. Not that Londo would go so far as to say he trusted his current chefs, but he did enjoy their cooking and they had been suitably bribed and threatened both. Those who could be trusted to stay bribed until a better offer came along were bribed and then monitored for the expected better offer, those with more of an independent mind were threatened, or had their loved ones threatened. Londo preferred the former but knew from personal experience what use the latter could be, so he did instruct his officers to use both, as appropriate, of course. It seemed to give them some relief that their new Emperor was not made too cosmopolitan by his duration on Babylon 5. As a result, he was welcomed home by a panoply of dishes from all over the Centauri worlds, some received with more success than others. Tonight seemed to be more in the success category, though there were one or two dishes he couldn't quite explain. 

"What in the name of all the gods are these?" He poked the suspicious-looking globules of fat and protein matter. 

G'Kar looked over. "Oh, that!" He sounded far more excited than he ever had or should be about Centauri food. "That's actually a discovery of mine. Well. Not the dish itself. But, you see..."

Londo was in mid-bite when he realized what it was and spat it indecorously into a napkin. "Blech. I remember those now. My father insisted on having them at special meals. I hated it."

"... Oh, well, then." G'Kar stopped whatever tangent he'd been about to embark on and continued eating with what Londo could only describe as a huff. The conversation, if not the entire rest of the meal from there on, would be full of the sort of unwanted tension that tied one's belly into knots. Londo sighed inwardly and cast about for for something else to say.

He didn't have to look farther than across the table, for that matter. As he watched G'Kar eat in silence and considered that for a fleeting moment or three he did feel bad that he had caused his friend some upset. That he called a Narn friend in the first place. "Does it not strike you as odd," he mused, interrupting G'Kar's next mouthful. "That we should be sitting here, you and me? Within our lifetimes, two beings who have every reason to be enemies, and yet we have managed to turn aside generations, centuries of violence and selfishness to sit and enjoy a meal together."

G'Kar's expression smoothed again into the stern contemplation with which he looked upon his students, or at least that was the context in which Londo remembered it. "Within our lifetimes we have seen enough war to satisfy any appetite for violence," he began, reaching over to Londo's plate with a delicate gesture and a utensil. "And because we two have learned to accept both our differences and our mistakes, and have found reasons to correct them when they are called to our attention. Not everyone has reached that place just yet."

Londo made a face at the miniature lecture. "I think I would almost prefer the war," he muttered, having lost his appetite to the topic of conversation and dropping his utensils onto his plate. "At least then you knew who your enemies were."

G'Kar smiled, expansive and, Londo thought, a bit smug. Of course the Narn found this very amusing. "Did you? Did you really, then?" 

Morden. Refa. Cartagia. No, Cartagia had been truly mad, it was hard to call someone an enemy when their idea of right and wrong was more like fruit and starships, neither one in any connection to the other or the original concept. Regent Virini, former Regent Virini, the poor man. He slid away from that thought before it could awaken something he did not want to confront during this already uncomfortable meal. 

"It was clearer, then," Londo insisted. Half-insisted and half-drifted in his thoughts, speaking more to history or to the air or to the ghosts of the ancestors he felt he had disappointed than to G'Kar. "We were told who we were supposed to hate, who we were supposed to fight and kill. We were told we had good reasons for doing so."

"And now you have to make up your own mind and make your own mistakes. Which frightens you more, Mollari, the fact that you have to think for yourself or the fact that you might occasionally be wrong?" 

Londo's return glare was half-hearted at best, and more for the fact that the Narn was right than out of any particular anger. "To listen to your people tell it, we are incapable of being right," he retorted. A touch more snappish than was customary in their tentative friendship of the past year or two, but G'Kar had found a sore spot, and the familiar irritable banter was comforting.

"And to listen to the Minbari, we are all of us too foolish to be allowed to think entirely for ourselves. And to listen to the humans tell it, no one from Babylon 5 ever made a mistake in their entire career." G'Kar chuckled to himself as he said it. Londo joined him after a moment's thought. 

"Clearly they were never around when Sheridan was swearing up and down that he would never again allow himself to be talked into such a deranged marketing scheme, or Ivanova muttering about being foolish enough to participate in Drazi rituals..." They both laughed harder, though it faded quickly, too. "It's a pity about Ivanova. She served her people well in the Earth Force."

"As she does now, with the Rangers," G'Kar pointed out. "She went where she was called. Her strength will serve her just as well there as it did on Babylon 5." 

"But not her, mm," Londo searched a bit for a polite word for it, having become accustomed to using several more rude ones. "Her temper. That woman would have made some poor bastard's life miserable, well," he chortled at the memories. "She did make several poor bastards' lives miserable, didn't she. All those ridiculous bureaucrats in the way of her progress, the pedantics, the..."

"Diplomats she had to wrangle on occasion?" 

"Yes, exactly..." Not that he hadn't seen where G'Kar was going with that, but it would be bad form not to provide the appropriate timing, which in this case required a comedic beat before taking umbrage. "Oh, you..." And infuriated noises, right on cue. "Bah. Besides, now she is a Ranger. From what I understand, dealing with the Minbari will be worse than the most infuriating diplomat." 

G'Kar shook his head, picking out from the selection of desserts a few things to try and signaling to a waiting servant to take the rest of the other courses away. "What about your people? Will you be sending any Ranger candidates to train on Minbar?" 

He didn't need the choking sensation on his throat to know how best to answer that one. "We Centauri, I think, are not suited to the Ranger way of life, the philosophy. It would take a very rare Centauri, several generations wiser, I think, to pass their tests." 

G'Kar paused, as though Londo would explain his unusual humility. Which of course he would not. "What about Vir?" 

"What about Vir?" Londo snorted, considering and failing to see the relevance of the suggestion, at least until he began to enumerate Vir's qualities. "He's entirely unsuited to warfare, has no sense of self-preservation or, for that matter, no ability to understand how brutal the world can be and how corrupt its inhabitants... Well, perhaps you're right." He took another drink. "Vir was a terrible Centauri. Perhaps he would make an exemplary Ranger."

"Perhaps you should send him to Minbar. Again," G'Kar chuckled. 

Londo shook his head. "No... If he is to be Emperor, as I am Emperor, I need to have him close by me so that he may learn whatever it is he needs to learn in order to be a better Emperor than I will be. As well as he might take to the following of Entil'Zha, his life will go down a different road."

"Is that what you have planned for him?" 

"No..." Londo leaned back in his chair, unhappy with the amount of wine he had drunk but still not yet allowing himself to see where this was going. "No, that is what the universe has planned for him. I am only the witness who was there when it was revealed to us in the person of the Emperor's widow."

Neither of them had much to say on the subject of the universe's plans for them. Londo swirled the liquid in his glass, tried to judge how much more he could manage and still remain upright in at least a vaguely dignified manner. G'Kar stared at him evenly, silently, with his robotic eye. "I hated you for a very long time, you know." 

"I know. You made yourself abundantly clear." 

"And then, when I realized that hating you only added to the harm you had done to me, I let it go." Nonetheless, the force with which he stabbed the piece of sculpted fruit seemed unwarrantedly aggressive. "I sometimes try to hate you again for what you did. Just a little. I'm told by certain Narns it is my duty to our people. But it keeps turning into something else."

"Not hate," though Londo was now drunkenly wishing G'Kar would hate him at least a little. "Not affection. What is it, do you think, that we are building here?" 

The Narn did give it some considerable thought before he replied. "Tolerance. And the wisdom to allow each other our mistakes, and to help each other learn from them instead of excoriating the offender and casting them out forever for the crime of not being impossibly and identically fair-minded."

Londo would have given that some thought but he was drunk now, and tired, and not in a mood to be fair-minded by anyone's standards including his own. He didn't want to practice tolerance, he wanted to be left alone to enjoy the company of his friends while he still had them, no matter how odd their tastes in dinner dishes. "Why did you ask for this, anyway?" Londo poked the plate further away from him, not that it mattered now that G'Kar had emptied it of all its offensive contents. "These are... roopo balls, this is peasant food."

"Ah, but, you see..." G'Kar leaned forward in the manner of someone about to deliver a vitally important lecture on which one's future political career might hang. "It's not just a product of Centauri peasants. Did you know that they have the exact same dish on Earth? They call it 'swedish meatballs.' On Narn we call it breen..."

"Pfaugh. No wonder you enjoy it. And you may enjoy all of it, if there is any left," he hauled himself out of his chair.

"Where are you going?"

"To the kitchens. Where at least they're honest about disliking me, and I know where my enemies are. And whatever they might do to me, the poisons will taste a thousand times better than your swedish meatballs."


End file.
